M Sarki

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/76948082132/powderhouse-scientific-postscript-and-last-protocol-by

Start with a mind-altering trip on LSD and then morph into a sermon on the ills of Christianity regarding witchcraft, Jews, negroes, and the persecution and torture of them all, the affects of evil in the world and how it is justly depicted in our modern art whereas the angelic can only be guessed at artistically and you have yourself one hell of a lot to think about here. And all of it coming from a madhouse by either a very sane person or one who is also mad. Better than any recent movie I can think of.

The fact that this book was written in 1969 and could have been written yesterday is astounding to me. There was a point last night I had to stop reading as the blood-letting (historical in fact) was overwhelming to me. We just do not know the trouble we humans have caused in the world, and the narrator says it is only going to get worse as we move out in our exploration and colonizing of space.

It was the beginning of the winter of 2014 when my wife and I began watching the brilliant Showtime series titled The Tudors. Among the many talented actors in the made-for-television event were Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Henry Cavill, not to mention the recently deceased Peter O'Toole. The show followed the reign of England's King Henry the Eighth. There were numerous changes in his kingdom throughout his many years in power but, not counting his six wives, the many gruesome public executions struck the loudest chord for me. The torture chambers extracting confessions leading to wrongful judgments in complicity, and the many ways to carry out these punishments, left little to the imagination. It was awful subjecting ourselves to this violence on our television, but it still felt as if it were a fiction, a movie, and not really true. Upon reading this second book in the trilogy of The History of Bestiality I came across many of these same exact instances and historical facts I learned from the TV. One of the executions on TV was of the King's cook who poisoned the Bishop (who, if memory serves, was actually an enemy). The cook was slowly lowered alive, spread-eagled and face up, into a large vat of boiling oil. So preposterous was this execution that I really did not believe they actually did this sort of thing. But then I read the same accounting in this very book! The actions of the king and others I was reading about throughout our gruesomely violent history of crimes against humanity became all too real for me and I had to put the book down for a spell. It was just too much to bear. Prior to this horrid feeling I was perfectly comfortable in my chair watching, I thought, an interesting, though gruesome, fiction. But to learn of all these terrible injustices brought down upon innocent peoples throughout the world and the history of humanity I was aghast at my own delusions and denials I had safely hidden my better self in. As charming as Jonathan Rhys Meyers was in his portrayal of King Henry the Eighth, my wife and I were both still horrified by his dozen or more tortures and public executions which included even one with a severely drunken headsman mutilating the neck, shoulders, and head of one of his sorry victims (actually the ill-favored King's right-hand man at the time) before an attendant took over for the oft-aimed inebriated axman to finish and successfully complete the awful deed. To make matters even worse I read this very morning in the novel that King Henry the Eighth actually ordered from the throne more than 70,000 executions during his reign on this bit of green crust called England.

I truly think this novel would make a great film. With the right actors it would be one of the richest, most rewarding films ever. Even the grounds and gardens of the bughouse are wonderful. The narrator's home. All the abundant nature. Including a hedgehog that made countless appearances. I even did a little bit of research today and learned that in 2006, McDonald's changed the design of their McFlurry containers to be more hedgehog-friendly. Previously, hedgehogs would get their heads stuck in the container as they tried to lick the remaining food from inside the cup. Then, being unable to get out, they would starve to death. And then what about all the other maladjusted, but brilliant and extremely bent personalities in this book? Wonderful wonderful. And that is how I am reading it. As a film. I think the Coen brothers would do it justice. Even Quentin Tarantino might make something out of it worth watching. And either one of these film-making teams could do the screenwriting as well.

Jens Bjørneboe produces numerous questions throughout his fictions. There are never any answers. He reports historical truth. His characters drink the wine and find pleasure where and when they can. There is little hope in the world of Jens Bjørneboe, and all our wishing in one hand produces nothing but shit in the other. He continually presents in his work a position of dissent, and a stance he demonstrates as historically heretical and generally punished by torture and execution. The violence and injustices can be tiresome at times, and in fact might wear a person down. These are novels most readers would not delve into and probably explains their commercial scarcity. These same careful and casual readers would rather sing carols and hear praises made to some holy name. Sort of helps me to understand better now the popularity of the world's current Catholic Pope. Very little of this reading was easy, but most of it was good. And if given enough time I would do it again, just like we humans do over and over in a world that hasn't really changed.